Mars 9-28-05, f25

Folks, My latest image is greatly improved from my first attempts on 8/11, but still quite blurry compared to recent posts. So far I have stopped using my diagonal when imaging, added an IR blocking filter, and have collimated my scope better. Last night while clear, required the evil use of the hair dryer to keep the dew in control.

C11 Toucam840, 1/33 sec, 0 gamma, 100 sat, brightness 45, gain 10, best 200 frames of 2318 captured at 10fps Registax2.

Any advice on processing is greatly welcome,
Regards,
Steve

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Steve, you are definitely getting very close to a great image!
It seems as if your focus is a bit soft, probably NOT on "THE SPOT", and this part of the imaging process is probably the most time consuming/critical one...

I normally go IN-OUT of focus several times, trying to get the feeling for the best position, which will give me the sharpest frames for the capture.
Also, try to collect as many frames as you can, since the more frames the more data you have to process, making your image a sharper one in the end...

You seem to have collected at least 2000 frames, but only 200 are used in your image. Did you manually selected them?

Might want to get multiple movies, and select the one that has the most "GOOD" frames, as you "normally" might want to use at least 800+ frames (the more the better) for a very sharp final shot...

My .02 centavos...


Keep it up, you are on the right track! 8)

Folks, To help sharpen my Mars images, I am trying to achieve the ultimate collimation. I decided to use the webcam to analyze the collimation of a 2.4 mag star, avoiding the "judgement" call on the tweaking. The out-of-focus ring is very unstable so I stacked 100 shots in black/white using Registax then considered the "final" image as the actual setup. It took 6 iterations, then I measured the ring using the photoshop ruler to verify symmetry. If anyone has a better method please reply back. Unfortunately, I had to use the hairdryer several times since the collimation star was overhead(to avoid turbulence) but the dew shield off to allow access to the knobs. I plan to verify and tweak again on another night.

Regards,
Steve

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